Magnus Carlsen – now we are eighteen

11/30/2008 – We first introduced the Wonderboy, the "Mozart of Chess", to our readership back in January 2004. In the meantime countless articles have been written about this super-star of chess, who for a few days in September this year topped the live world rankings. Today he is eighteen – a good opportunity to embarrass him with some baby photos we dug up. Happy Birthday, Magnus!

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Let's begin this formally: Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen
was born on 30 November 1990 in Tønsberg, Norway. He played his first
tournament at the age of eight and was coached at the Norwegian high school
for top athletes led by the country's top player, Grandmaster (GM) Simen Agdestein.
In 2004, just two months after his thirteenth birthday, he won the C group at
the Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee (see our "Mozart" report
below), making his first GM norm with an Elo performance of 2702.

Magnus obtained his second GM norm in the Moscow Aeroflot Open a few weeks
later. In a blitz chess tournament in Reykjavík, Iceland, in March 2004,
he defeated former world champion Anatoly Karpov, and drew a rapid chess game
against Garry Kasparov. The third GM norm and title came at the Dubai Open in
April 2004, making him the world's youngest GM (at the time) and the second
youngest chess
prodigy ever to hold GM status.

Magnus Carlsen number one on Live Ratings

After his round four victory over Teimour Radjabov in the Bilbao Masters (and
assisted by Anand's loss to Topalov in the same round), Magnus Carlsen climbed
to the number one position in the world – on the unofficial Live
Rating List that ranks all players over 2700 on a daily basis. Here are
the standings on September 5, 2008, at 21:37 CET

#

Player

live rtg

change

games

events

born

01

Magnus Carlsen

2791.3

+16.3

25

3

1990

02

Vishy Anand

2790.9

-7.1

4

1

1969

03

Alexander Morozevich

2787.0

-1

9

1

1977

04

Veselin Topalov

2786.2

+9.2

4

1

1975

05

Vassily Ivanchuk

2781.8

+0.8

44

5

1969

06

Vladimir Kramnik

2771.9

-16.1

16

2

1975

07

Levon Aronian

2754.1

+17.1

17

2

1982

08

Teimour Radjabov

2749.5

+5.5

17

2

1987

09

Peter Leko

2746.6

+5.6

16

2

1979

10

Wang Yue

2735.5

+31.5

23

2

1987

27.01.2004 ChessBase report: "The Mozart of Chess"

This was our first indepth report and our first use of an epithet conferred
by GM Lubomir Kavalek of the Washington Post on the then 13-year-old Norwegian
came in January 2004. Magnus had made his first grandmaster norm and won the
Corus C-group
in Wijk aan Zee and our
report contains the games of this remarkable young lad whom we advised our
readers to watch carefully in the future. It also included a portrait of Magnus
Carlsen by Mathias Berntsen.

Magnus in 2001 (aged ten)

Magnus Carlsen played in his first tournament when he was eight. Relatively
late some might say, but his development has been dramatic. His talent was discovered
immediately and Norway’s best player of all time, GM Simen Agdestein, took on
the task of training him. This has proven very successful and with Magnus’ never
ending enthusiasm and desire to learn, the results came quickly.

Magnus participated in both World and European Youth Championships (age divided
groups), and his best result came in Crete, Greece in November 2002 where he
finished second with 9 points (he lost on tie-breakers to his arch-nemesis:
Ian Nepomniachtchi RUS 2433).

Already a star in the chess community in Norway, Magnus is a very well liked
kid. He has a smile and natural charm that people love. Often he is observed
playing with a football while waiting for his opponent to find a move (or resign).

In order to keep developing his chess he has to work very hard. Until recently
it was 2-3 hours a day, now-a-days it is more like 4-5 hours. He spends many
hours reading chess books (which he loves), playing on the Internet and training
with his tutor. In addition, he also loves to play football, go skiing and even
ski jumping! Scary.

To
give him the opportunity to develop his talents his parents have sold their
second car, rented out their house, and for a year they will be traveling around
the world so Magnus can participate in chess tournaments. Magnus’ school work
is not neglected at all, but it has to be done in the back seat of a car, in
hotel rooms, etc. Both his father and sisters participate in some of the tournaments
as well. Traveling around to chess tournaments in different countries is not
at all cheap, and it would not have been possible without financial aid. Luckily
he has now found a sponsor (Microsoft).

Magnus' memory is said to be photographic. His coach did a little stunt for
some journalists: on TV he showed the boy a diagram from a position in a chess
book Magnus immediately replied which game it was, from which book, and roughly
how it went. His father also has stories of five year old Magnus reciting the
name, size and population of all the 430 counties in Norway. This ability is
undoubtedly very useful when keeping up-to-date on modern opening theory. One
might assume this has been vital when building up his amazing opening repertoire.

Magnus Carlsen is being called “without a doubt the most gifted talent in Western
Europe at this time”. He is clearly a player we will see more of in the years
to come. Fans can already start looking forward to the next Corus Chess Tournament,
where Magnus will be playing in Group B (he qualified directly by winning Group
C this year). So, how far can he go? Interesting question. His coach is sure
he is 2700+ material and that he might play for the World Championship title
one day. That might be true, but there are many obstacles and difficulties to
overcome, and numerous things might get in the way. He is still so young, and
young people change fast. Perhaps he will suddenly stop improving and grow tired
of chess altogether. Let’s hope not. Luckily there are no indications of this
yet. He seems hungrier than ever.

2004: Magnus analysing the position with his opponent after the game

19.03.2004: Boy meets Beast in Reykjavik

It was a dream pairing for the organizers: a 13-year-old Norwegian cherub (yes,
we actually called him that) faced legend Garry Kasparov in the first round
of this Icelandic rapid knock-out event. The result was predictable but it was
closer than you'd think. Our
report at the time contained a game annotated by Almira Skripchenko.

"I was not at all happy with my 0.5-1.5 against Kasparov in the rapid chess
game," Magnus said. "I should have won as White. As Black I played
like a child!"

Incidentally, it was after this encounter that Garry Kasparov instructed us
to "watch this kid". In fact Kasparov wrote a dedication in two volumes
of his Great Predecessor series and sent them to Magnus, as an encouragement
to the boy. The Carlsen family at first though it was a practical joke, and
were overjoyed when they discovered it was real. Magnus' grandfather, we were
told, younged (opposite of aged) ten years when this became clear.

30.04.2004: Magnificent Magnus, the world's youngest grandmaster

Magnus had just made his final GM norm with a performance of 2678 at the Dubai
Open. This news electrified the chess world because the player in question was
just 13 years old, the youngest GM in the world. "He is also a bright and
highly eloquent kid," we wrote, and provided a remarkable
in-depth interview by Hans Olav Lahlum to prove this claim.

Hans Olav Lahlum interviewing Magnus Carlsen in April 2004

Here a few short samples from the interview. The answers of the lad are as
spoken, not doctored or edited. He actually has a very sophisticated level of
discourse. Today he does it equally well in a disconcertingly flawless and erudite
English.

Magnus: I can’t deny that there has been a lot of traveling
lately, and more traveling by car than I really care for. But that part of my
efforts to become a professional player has been inaccurately portrayed by the
media. It is true that I have not been to school since last summer, and that
I have been playing a lot of chess. But it has always been my parents plan to
take a year off and show us, their children, the world. And this year was a
good opportunity to do so, both for me, my sister and my parents. And I’m
definitely going back to school again this autumn...

12 year old Magnus, still a lowly FM (Elo 2326) at the Barentssjakken 2003
tournament.

I have not missed school yet. I do not learn much during ordinary classes.
It is so much more effective when mom and dad are tutoring me. I do of course
understand the problem a teacher with thirty students has; nevertheless, it
is kind of frustrating and under-stimulating for me with all the waiting. I
become unmotivated and I spend little time with schoolwork when it is like that.
In spite of that I am among the best in my class in all the subjects except
for drawing, crafts and other subjects not suited for us with ten thumbs. When
I am at school I look forward to the time between classes and to going home,
nothing else.

19.11.2004: Magnus comes to town

At the end of 2004 a book about Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian wonderboy, was
published by New in Chess in Holland. It was written by his trainer GM Simen
Agdestein and is available in three languages. We published a review
by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam when Magnus paid a visit to Amsterdam in October
2004 to promote the book.

"One of the criticisms of the book," Dirk Jan wrote, "has been
that it is a bit early to write a biography of a 13-year-old. A predictable
reproach, but this is exactly missing the point of the book, which reads like
a fairy-tale and depicts the stellar development of a young chess player with
an unusual talent and ends with the fulfillment of one of his big dreams, i.e.
becoming a grandmaster. On this adventure the reader follows him from his earliest
games to his spectacular recent exploits guided by Simen Agdestein, who shows
great pedagogical skills and gives the narrative a pleasant pace with his unflagging
enthusiasm."

Magnus signing the Wonderboy book in Amsterdam

And here to thoroughly embarrass Magnus on this his eighteenth birthday are
some baby pictures taken from the Wonderboy book, with the original captions.

Little Magnus gets going. Here he is nine months...

...and here he is one and a half years old.

Three-year-old Magnus after dinner.

When he was five he found chess unappealing, but at Lego he soon played
in higher age categories

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!

Enjoy the best moments of recent top tournaments (World Cup, Isle of Man Open) with analysis of top players. In addition you'll get lots of training material. For example 10 new suggestions for your opening repertoire.